“How stupid do I look? Dumb enough to go along with your little get rich quick idea, but not enough to leave a witness. And you didn’t let Ashley take the Toyota and skip off back to Iowa, did you? Shit, you musta shot her.” Foster began to get nervous, tried to keep her hand steady and not betray her heart fluttering.
Peters backed off towards the gas station, looked in the repair bay, squinted. She saw his hand go for the 9mm strapped to his waist. She was quicker, getting the .40 Glock out and aimed at his chest just as his Beretta cleared the holster. One shot, two; Peters staggered back against the metal garage door, rattling it, sliding down, and leaving a red smear as he went, still bringing up the Beretta, but one more slug from the Glock in the forehead and his body spasmed and went limp as a rag doll. The gun clattered on the concrete apron.
Foster thumbed the safety on, holstered the Glock, and took deep breaths to fight down the nausea and dizziness. She went over to Peters, kicked the Beretta away towards the pumps, just in case, and dug out the keys to the Crown Vic—and found a set of Toyota keys jumbled up with them. She leaned over and retched until her stomach was empty and her abs ached.
“You okay?” It was Decker’s voice, his head poking around the back of the station. She nodded, wiping her lips with her sleeve. Decker emerged warily, saw Peters’ body and froze. “He dead?”
“Yep. Him or me. He lost.” She went back to the Crown Vic to retrieve a bottle of water, washed the puke out of her mouth, spat it away.
“So now what?” Decker asked.
“Good question,” Foster said. “I don’t fancy hauling your ass around this state the next few years to keep you from turning me in to the FBI for asset fraud, and getting my ass sent to some gulag in New Mexico or North Dakota.”
“Was his idea,” Decker said helpfully.
“Yeah, but I went along with it, which makes me an accessory. So I’m guilty. And I don’t trust the quarter million bucks in your pocket’s gonna last all that long anyway, ‘cause it’s gonna be worthless in a week, maybe two.”
“What’re you talking about?” Decker asked, and Foster explained the re-monetization plan, watching Decker’s face grow redder and darker, and he let loose with a string of expletives.
“Knew that son of a bitch was holding back, no way he’d let me have a quarter million clear and free. Shit, I’m glad you shot him.”
“Yeah, and that’s the other problem,” she said. “I’ve just shot and killed a federal agent, admittedly in self defense, but he’s still dead. A jury might walk me, if I ever see one, which these days isn’t likely, but that’s a crapshoot. And you’re the only witness, Dewayne.” And as she said it, she got tunnel vision and saw her choices, and Decker’s fate rapidly irising down to one possible conclusion.
“I ain’t gonna tell no one,” Decker said, his voice rising. “We hide him, put him down in one of the grease bays. It’ll be a long time before he’s found. Or dump him out in the fields or in a shelter belt—hell, it’s gonna be a while before farmers plow their fields or anyone goes hunting around here. If they do, what’s one more dead body?”
“What, indeed,” Foster said, almost sick to her stomach again, watching Decker throw up his hands and turn to run as she brought the Glock back out, hit him in the ribs as he turned, once in the back, and final shot to the back of the head as he dropped to his knees. Decker collapsed face-forward in a spray of pinkish gray mist that coated the concrete.
She dumped both the bodies in the service bay, threw tarps and oily rags over the them, used a case of bottled water in the office area to wash away the blood.
It was almost noon as she started up the Crown Vic and drove away from the scene. No way she was going back to dealing with sniggered comments about her tits and come-ons masquerading as mentoring from “experienced” officers. Peters was right, bastard though he was, the country was going to hell and it wasn’t getting any better. He’d been wrong about one thing, though. Mexico was no good. She hated the heat. Always had. Cool weather, October all year, that was her joy.
“What’s a couple more bodies?” she told herself, taking the highway north.
About the author:
By day, Sam Kepfield is an attorney. By night, he is a writer of science fiction and horror. His first published work appeared in the 2006 Apodis Press anthology “Goodbye, Darwin.” Since then he has published stories in Science Fiction Trails, Jupiter SF, Revolutions SF, Cemetery Moon, The Future Fire, and the Aiofe’s Kiss anthology “Cover of Darkness.” In August 2009, his story “Salvage Sputnik” was selected as the 3rd place winner in the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Short Story Contest.
He is a product of the Great Plains. He grew up in Larned, Kansas, received his B.A. from Kansas State University in 1986, and received his law degree from the University of Nebraska in 1989; he also received an M.A. in history from the University of Nebraska and a Ph.D./abd from the University of Oklahoma. He currently lives and works in Hutchinson, Kansas.
A Year Later
by Jack Horne
A year later, we’d eaten all the animals. Everyone was starving.
I eyed the man beside me, knowing he was probably having the same thoughts. There was no time to lose.
Smiling at him, I asked him if he could see the glowing object in the sky. He looked up, exposing his throat, and I slashed.
He stared in horror, gurgling. I was prepared for the spurting blood and agilely stepped aside while I waited for him to die. It didn’t take long.
Hanging him up by his ankles, I gutted him and began filleting. Then I chopped the meat into joints. I expected it to taste like pork. Alas, it would have to be eaten raw.
The others had just watched. In far worse states than I was, they didn’t have the energy to challenge me. I called to them. “Hey, chow’s up!”
Some crept towards me, some crawled. I flung offal at them and they swallowed the slimy organs, even excrement filled intestines were devoured. Bloody-faced, they begged for more. I hurled the legs into the midst of the crowd, and they gnawed like wolves in a pack.
They would have eaten my entire kill if I’d let them. I tossed them the head and dragged the rest of the meat away. As they fell upon the staring head, I sat in a corner, snarling like a wild beast, and tore strips of the flesh with my teeth.
Hungry-eyed, they watched every mouthful. I threw some of the fat at salivating children and they closed their eyes in ecstasy as they tasted it, their hungry parents looking on.
“Please, more,” the masses begged.
Indulgently, I gave up the arms, but the rest of the meat was mine, and not for sharing.
I put the flesh—enough for a week, I estimated—in a bag and carried if off, waving my butcher’s instruments at anyone who dared to follow me.
In my lair, I put the precious bundle of meat behind my head as a pillow and slept my meal off. I kept a knife in each hand, ready to slice an intruder at the slightest sound.
I was disturbed only once that week. A young man in his early twenties tried his luck, thinking I would allow him to share my prize.
His movements woke me and, without even looking at him, I stuck a knife between his eyes. Then I swung my cleaver and split his skull in two. His intrusion was fortunate for me, as my provisions were running low. I estimated that the young man’s remains would keep me going for another week, at least. And I would keep it to myself that time. Sharing didn’t pay.
It lasted for nearly three weeks. I ate the best cuts of meat first and then genitals, eyes, tongue, and intestines.
Finally, famished, I left my lair to hunt again. I went in search of my pregnant daughter that time. My husband and son had tasted so damn good.
About the author:
Jack’s a vegetarian and lives in Plymouth, England. He’s had quite a lot of short stories, poems, and articles published in UK, USA, and Australia.
Golden Doors to a Golden Age
by A.J. French
The four of them had ended up t
ogether, traveling as a group, braving the same gaseous winds, the same poisonous storms, the same distortions in space-time. A professor of theology, a professor of mathematics and physics, a professor of anthropology, and a professor of classical literature and philosophy. Some things, Elaine mused to herself as they made their daily progress down the highway, were meant to be.
Like that thing, she thought, looking at the sky, where a giant, warbling cell-like creature, a huge blotch of darkness housed in a purple membrane, writhed among the clouds. Things of that nature don’t spring into existence by accident. They exist for a reason, as a catalyst, even as an instrument to destroy humanity.
Thomas was complaining. He had been complaining since he joined them back in Boston. Short, bald, fat, four-eyed fuck that he was. Mathematics and physics and skepticism. It might’ve been a mistake letting him join.
“I need to use the inhaler,” he was saying. “I’m still having trouble breathing.” He took a deep breath, the wheeze rattling his chest.
Ron was in charge of the inhaler. He had found it lying in the road a few hundred miles back—a small blue disc with the word Advair written on the side.
“You’ve just used it this last hour,” he said.
Ron the philosopher. Ron the reader. Even now, during this time when nothing seemed to matter, he was reading a collection of Russian short stories while he walked, occasionally peering over the top of his book to examine the road. “The dose is supposed to last twelve hours.”
“But I’m dying here,” Thomas complained.
Ron sighed. “Wait a while, see if it kicks in.” He was older than the rest, the oldest in fact at sixty-five, but his age did not show. He had a lightness about him, and something of a carefree attitude. His skin was smooth, bronze colored, and almost entirely free of wrinkles. He still had a patch of brown hair on his blockish head—and if anything he appeared twenty years the junior of Thomas who was well into his fifties.
Elaine supposed things like beauty (which she still possessed), and hair color (hers being blond), and youth (which had fled in 2010 when she turned forty) didn’t seem to matter anymore. Aestheticism had gone out the window that morning in December when the sun rose on a world suddenly darkened by cosmic chaos. Nothing, nothing at all really, seemed to hold much beauty anymore.
Except for her lover…
She looked at Diana. In the beginning it had been the two of them, the two girls. The men came later. That initial year, perhaps the most trying year, they were two frightened women looking out for each other, accompanying each other, and sharing each other’s hurts, pains.
“I can breathe fine and I had a hit same time he did…same time we all did,” Diana said, turning to her. “Sure he’s twenty years older than me, but so what? No senior citizen discounts on this trip.”Elaine laughed, but her insides were melting. She felt them crumble apart then grow back together. Whenever she was drawn to Diana, drawn to her romantically—whenever she felt attracted to her—this happened. A combination of sexual excitement, romantic longing, and moral shame. It was strange to experience all three at once. It felt like her soul was shattering.
“If he’d shut up for five minutes,” Diana continued, “instead of being a windbag, it might let him breathe easier.”
“You should tell him that,” Elaine said, still laughing.
Diana took her hand, but her immediate reaction, even after all that had happened, was to pull away.
Her mother who had taught catechism at their church had conditioned her as a child. And her father’s voice, her father the pastor, condemned her for engaging in homosexual relations. In Leviticus 20:13, the Bible states: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death…”
But an absurd string of questions ran through her mind—Does being a lesbian tarnish my professional reputation as a religious scholar? Am I committing career suicide? What about my soul?
She pushed the questions from her mind and clasped Diana’s hand tighter. Diana smiled, and she thought, some things are just meant to be.
***
By nightfall they were near the Michigan/Canada border. They had built a fire by the side of the road in a ditch beneath some decaying oaks. Normally it would be impossible to camp outside this time of year without freezing, but since the earth went haywire, the weather was anything but normal.
Thomas had stopped complaining about his breathing. The inhaler had finally kicked in, but it wouldn’t last. Elaine knew this as she sat alone with her back to the fire, gazing up at the sky. Green gaseous clouds, vividly colored like something from a Dr. Seuss book, moved over the countryside. Breathing had become increasingly difficult. People were dying because of it. If you couldn’t get your hands on a gas mask or one of the remaining inhalers, you were shit out of luck.
She was thinking about the Golden Doors. That was the only thing anyone wanted to talk about lately. The towns they passed through with their crumbling buildings, trash-pile mountains, and fissure-spilt asphalt, had boasted handfuls of these neurotic, doomsayer types, lecturing to no one in particular about the mystery of the Golden Doors.
Elaine recalled a short and shriveled hag of a woman back in Philadelphia who stood on a park bench, dressed in trash bags, gray hair poking up, eyes feverish and wild. They sprang up all over the globe, she had said. Folks wanna say it ain’t true, that the Golden Doors are a myth, but I’ve seen one. I looked into its shimmering depths and I nearly went mad.
“What’d you see?” asked someone from the crowd.
But the hag had never answered; she only grinned mischievously.
Thousands were moving across the forty-eight states into major cities, spreading word of these Golden Doors, claiming firsthand experience. Many had embarked on pilgrimages in search of them. Elaine’s group, consisting of herself, Diana, Thomas, and Ron, had embarked on such a quest.
Elaine got to her feet and brushed the seat of her pants. The lights in the sky, green and fiery, churned above her head. Strange red, silken beings swam through the cumuli as though it were an ocean, paying little attention to the world below.
She went to join the others by the fire. “It’s night and I’m tired,” she said, taking out her bedroll and throwing it over the ground. She put on her facemask and got curled up in the covers, facing the flames.
Diana unrolled her bedding beside Elaine. She got situated and began stroking her hair.
“I don’t know how they can sleep like that,” Thomas said. He sat across from them on the other side of the fire, smoking a cigarette. “Those facemasks are damn annoying. It’s easier if we just take another dose of the inhaler before turning in. Don’t you think?”
“Enough already,” Elaine grumbled. “I can sleep fine.”
“So can I,” Diana added.
“I as well,” Ron said.
Thomas got up, flicked his cigarette, and stalked into the nearby woods. He typically slept by himself, so this wasn’t a big surprise.
“That settles it, then,” Ron said, gazing into the fire. Orange flames clawed the night. He laid down his sleeping bag and within moments, all were asleep.
***
Elaine awoke to a sound. She’d been having a nightmare about her son. She hadn’t seen Jamie since it happened, since the world locked up like a computer screen. He had been attending undergraduate classes at Princeton University, had been living on campus, and was even studying law. But now Princeton University was a giant seething sandpit, liquid desert stretching for miles with horrifically large dolphins plated like insects diving in and out of the sand. She had seen it with her own eyes, but had found no sign of Jamie.
The sound was coming from the trees. They could hardly be called trees, looking more like witches being burned at the stake, ashen leaves dangling from skeletal limbs. These were the trees Thomas had vanished into earlier.
It sounded like whispering.
Elaine propped herself u
p. Diana was lying next to her, snoring into her facemask. Beyond the fire, which had died down to coals, lay Ron in his sleeping bag.
The sound came again, drifting through the crooked branches, permeating the air. She got up and stretched her back; sleeping on the ground was always painful. She passed Ron’s sleeping bag and continued into the trees.
She thought, It isn’t safe to travel this far from the highway. I’m really asking for trouble. But that sound…it’s got to be Thomas. What the hell is he up to?
The gaseous clouds gave off a light all their own, sickly and green, like the underside of a pond. Nevertheless, night was still night, darkness still darkness, and she had trouble picking her way through the terrain.
2013: The Aftermath Page 16